Many OERs are affiliated with reputable institutions such as MIT and SUNY, with the major repositories requiring certain criteria to be met before being listed (eg. the text must have been adopted by other institutions in addition to the text's affiliated institution).

Open Educational Resources can include lesson plans, course materials, videos, games and open textbooks.

An open textbook is a textbook licensed under an open copyright license, and made available online to be freely used by students, teachers and members of the public. Many open textbooks are distributed in either print, e-book, or audio formats that may be downloaded or purchased at little or no cost.

(based on original writing by Montgomery College, published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at https://cms.montgomerycollege.edu/elite/
oer/types/.)

What are Open Educational Resources?

"Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them" - UNESCO

Why Use OERs?

Textbook prices around the world have risen rapidly in recent years, with some countries having observed the cost of tertiary textbooks just about tripling the overall CPI inflation rate in the past decade. Today, it is not uncommon for some university textbooks to be sold for approximately S$200 at bookstores, which can add up to thousands of dollars spent on purchasing textbooks for an entire degree.

The Chronicle of Higher Education noted that two-thirds to three-quarters of students avoided buying textbooks due to their cost. Not having the required cost material on hand could adversely affect students' scores and learning outcomes.

With the growing availability of OERs, course instructors can potentially find appropriate texts that meet course objectives and may be able to substitute pricey texts for these open license textbooks available at no cost to students.